James Purefoy To Play Simon Templar in The Saint

Wednesday, December 05, 2007

Breaking news on the forthcoming coming TV series of The Saint, and you heard it here first!

James Purefoy, who played Mark Antony in "Rome" is set to play the new Simon Templar in the forthcoming TV series of The Saint.

Bill Macdonald tells www.saint.org (the official website of The Saint Club) that his team is prepping a two-hour pilot for a European shoot. The reason for shooting in Europe is the current strike situation in U.S. would otherwise hold up production. Shooting in Berlin and Australia begins in April.

Bill goes on to say that the show is being produced by himself (William J. MacDonald), Geoffrey Moore (Sir Roger Moore's son), and Jorge Zamacona (most recently of "Oz").

James Purefoy, who will play the new Saint, was screen tested for the role of James Bond in 1995 for Goldeneye, and throughout 2004 and 2005 Purefoy's name was rumoured as a possible candidate to replace Brosnan as agent 007 in future James Bond films. These rumors surfaced again before the 2006 film, Casino Royale.

Having read almost all the original saint novels and watched the reruns of the George Sanders and Roger Moore series as well as Ian Ogilvy's great portrayal I believe that this new series has the ability to resurrect and reboot one of the most famous names in fiction and hopefully bury memories of the lack lustre 1997 movie. Let's pray that James does for the saint what Daniel did for 007.

The current writer's strike in the USA makes it impossible to even start discussing a US production right now, so they are going ahead in Europe as far as they can go until the strike is over. This means that now we actually care about the strike as it has real impact!